Suffice to say, Rick Grimes and Lori Grimes aren’t having the world’s best marriage. The couple at the center of The Walking Dead, the duo have been through hell in more ways than one and entered into Season 3 barely speaking to one another.

Recently, I was among a group of journalists who sat down with Andrew Lincoln and Sarah Wayne Callies to discuss Rick & Lori, their relationship and how they’re adapting to new locations like the prison and new characters like The Governor this season.

Question: Your characters definitely have some notable stresses between them this season, even though she’s very close to having your baby.

Sarah Wayne Callies: Well, a baby. That’s why things between us are still not so great. You had to bring it up!

Andrew Lincoln: We’re in the worst place we’ve been since pre-apocalypse. I think it’s caused this possibly irrevocable rift between the two of them, although there is some movement, certainly in the first few episodes. They are, for the sake of the group and themselves, trying to heal this rift.

Callies: It’s a situation I feel like they would never try to recover from were it not for the fact that it’s the end of the world and everyone else they know is dead. Last season, people were always asking, “Why doesn’t Lori just kick Shane out of the group?” My answer was always, “There are only three people alive who knew her six weeks ago. You can’t overestimate the power of that.” Well, now Shane’s gone, and Rick and Lori have been together since high school. I think if it were not for the end of the world, we would just go our separate ways because there’s been too much pain, too much loss. At this point, you sort of go, “I can’t bring myself to leave. I can’t bring myself to look at you. I don’t know where that leaves us.” And I think we’ve been festering in that.

Lincoln: We made a conscious decision not to make eye contact, just because every time we look at each other it burns with guilt and shame of what’s happened. And I agree with all of it, it’s that thing of having history. The Road was the important book for this season. Last season it was Lonesome Dove for me, but this one, it was The Road. It’s a beautiful thing; they’re starting to forget the past. Words mean less, and that’s why holding onto your history means everything in this apocalypse, I think. So I absolutely agree, I think they have to make it work.

Callies: What I think it interesting is that what’s gone wrong between them is not that I told him to watch his back and he killed Shane. I think we were both very clearly on the same page that that happened and that that had to happen. In some ways, that was a big success, right? I warned my husband that someone was going to try and kill him, he tried to kill him, and the right man came out of the fight. But then he tells me, “I wanted him dead,” and I recoil from him instead of embracing him and making him feel safe. That’s one of the things I love about the way this marriage has been written. This is not a couple that’s pissed off because she had an affair and he killed the guy. Whatever. That’s the obvious version. This is a couple that’s heartbroken because she’s afraid that he had turned into Shane by killing him, and he needed her in that moment to just say, “You’re a good man. I forgive you, and I love you.” And she instead backed off. And when we shot it I spat in his face -- but they cut that. They didn’t go for that, which is too bad.

Lincoln: That’s why I don’t watch it! I wanted the spit version.

Callies: Me too! Me too.

Question: Andrew, you start out the good guy doing good things, but your character has changed a lot.

Lincoln: That was one of the things that attracted me to the role, the fact that he goes on this extraordinary journey with all this deterioration and change. That was a huge attraction to why I wanted to play the role. But I think it’s just all of the characters, it’s not just him. It’s always that thing of trying to describe something…. Everyone is trying to go, what is it? What’s the alchemy? And I really wish I knew. All I know is that when we film it, it’s the same crew that has worked on it all three years. They are magnificent, and they care about this more than anybody, as a huge group of fans. They get the scripts, they peel them open just as voraciously as we do. They can’t wait. They want to tell this really great story with all of these amazingly complicated but true characters. That’s the bit that reminds me -- I was just talking about it -- it reminds me of an old western, of The Magnificent Seven. It’s got those kinds of old ideas, those old moral archetypes within it. But then they invert it, like you say. They go against the norm. I suppose if you’re doing serialized TV, you want to keep surprising the audience. I know they sit in the writers room going, “What do we do next?”

Callies: I think that it is a part of what works on our show, but it’s also more than just our show. I was watching the Emmys and people kept talking about this golden age of television. I think what serialized cable dramas have given us is the opportunity to not simply tell the same story with slightly different words and costumes every week. I think about something like Breaking Bad. I mean, the evolution of that character is enormous. Or Mad Men and the evolution of that character. What’s happening in television right now is I think people are really mining the ability of storytellers, to tell a long form story that goes from “A” to “Z,” and to trust that an audience will follow that. Because if they miss it over the course of the week, they can watch it online or buy the DVDs; there are so many different ways of interacting with it that storytelling in television really is getting more complex and nuanced.

Lincoln: I think that’s right, and you reward the audience by planting something in the first season that you can reveal in the third season. And people go, “Oh because of dah dah dah!” You know what I mean? It’s a beautiful thing. As a writer, I would go, “What a great opportunity.” A new writer comes on to a show, watches and goes, “I want to do the payoff for that, that happened in episode two.”

Question: You mentioned how she did recoil at that initial discovery about Shane. And now he’s going even further in some ways -- killing Tomas and leaving Andrew outside to die. She doesn’t see any of that stuff directly.

Lincoln: But she said something to me.

Callies: Yeah, I say, “Do what you’ve got to do.” .

Lincoln: She gave consent.

Exit Theatre Mode

Question: Do you think she really believes that, or is she just trying to make it work?

Callies: I think what Lori’s very clear on is that her husband is the right man to lead them and that whatever he needs from her, to be a better leader, is what she will give him. In Season 2 and Season 1, there was a lot of “I don’t know if this is the right call,” or “I think you should stay here.” And what I saw was that discordance between us. That caused him to second guess himself, and there were a lot of challenges there. I think she’s taking a new approach -- which is not “stand by your man no matter what” -- but to trust the man to handle the individual decisions and not get too involved in the minutia of it. Also, I think they’ve divided this world, and she’s saying, “You handle what’s out there. I will handle what’s in here.”

Lincoln: But that’s the beautiful thing: you don’t want to be a burden at any cost. That’s a great thing, you know, she’s got a baby. This is the worst pressure that we can possibly have. But Sarah made this fantastic choice as an actress to say nothing. “I’m going to put no burden on you. You’re going to get none of that.” Because she knows how f**ked we are.

Callies: And the burden that you’ve put on yourself.

Lincoln: That’s it. He does it himself. That’s the thing. He’s Job, this dude, and he’s testing himself. I think the fundamental difference between him and the Governor is the burden of responsibility and guilt that he carries. I wouldn’t want to speak for another actor, but I’m not sure that [The Governor] carries that. I think he sees the world for what it is, and it’s a more nihilistic kind of view. I think he just says, “This is the new world now.” He’s able to detach himself from it. I’m not. Everything costs this guy, and she realizes that. It’s an incredibly generous thing to do after all this, to go, “I trust you. It’s fine. It’s all taken care of. You just do what you need to do. Make us safe.”

Question: What is the dynamic like with Carl this season?

Lincoln: His story is the one I’m most fascinated by this year.

Callies: Yeah, it’s complicated, and I think Carl is the one who is most affected by the rift between Rick and Lori, out of everyone else. Glen Mazzara and I were talking about this, actually, before the season started. Children are so adaptable, and they really can adapt themselves to any circumstance except for the divorce of their parents or the death of a parent. There’s something to be said for the fact that nothing that has happened -- killing Shane as a zombie, feeling responsible for Dale’s death, seeing Sophia die -- nothing has been harder on Carl than seeing his parents effectively separate, which is more or less what’s happened. I think his journey this season is a very, very complicated one, because whether Rick can bring himself to forgive Lori -- and Lori, Rick -- those are mature questions. Carl is handling them as a boy soldier who has one little box for his emotions that he shoves them into and slams the lid on, and then arms himself to deal with this world -- and Chandler [Riggs] does it beautifully. Oh my Lord.

Lincoln: Yeah, watch out for the kid this season. He is amazing.

Callies: The level of nuance in his work is terrifying.

Lincoln: I’m convinced he’s a 48-year-old trapped in a child’s body.

Callies: He’s also getting bigger. First season, I had my arm [held low] around him, and this season, I had my arm up on his shoulder. By Season 4, he’s going to have his arm around my shoulder.